Okay, okay. In all seriousness, the movie’s not bad and by not bad I mean I think this may be the worst movie ever made. See, on the one hand it’s got spectacular production values and a fairly good, B-list cast, but then on the other hand it has some of the goofiest moments in cinematic history.
Now this movie was directed by Dr. Uwe Boll (which is apparently pronounced ‘oooo-vaaa’) who has been called ‘the most maligned director of his generation’, and that’s probably not an inaccurate statement. He makes B-movies and, to be fair, he makes them pretty well. The biggest problem I see is that there are perfectly good moments in his movies and in the moments that aren’t so good you can actually SEE where it went wrong and could have been improved, making it so much more painful for the viewer. Now, this man was actually at the After Dark screening last night and I have to say that now that I’ve heard him speak and my husband has met him, I’m really divided on how I feel about him. He’s obviously passionate about making movies. He was obviously able to assemble a
cast this good, including Jason Statham, John-Rhys Davies, Ray Liotta, Matthew Lillard, LeeLee Sobieski, Burt Reynolds, and Claire Forlani. And obviously he was able to get the funding to do this movie (as well as many more) so… what’s the problem? He made note a number of times last night that he feels that his movies are reviewed badly because critics can’t seem to give him a chance. The review for BloodRayne was basically the review for Alone in the Dark with the title changed. He queried that he really didn’t know what people expected from movies like House of the Dead and just how he was supposed to make something deep and meaningful when the video game’s plot was simply about shooting zombies? Put in this framework I kind of have to agree with him. Having recently sat through Resident Evil: Extinction, I frankly don’t see the difference between any of the movies I just mentioned and any of the Resident Evil movies. Or any other number of video game adaptations really.
So on to this movie, for which the plot doesn’t matter because the fanboys will know and nobody else cares, but for posterity I’ll take a stab. It is about a man named Farmer (Statham) whose son is killed and his wife is captured by an army of ‘dog-like’ beasts who are being controlled by the Bad Guy (Liotta) with the help of a bumbling Duke (Lillard). Farmer gets mad when his family is at risk and decides to go get them back. The King (an unintentionally hilarious Reynolds) is trying to decide what to do with the help of his Magus (Rhys-Davies) and the Magus’ daughter (Sobieski) who doesn’t want to stay out of harm’s way. Frankly it doesn’t really matter what they all do, except that — of course — the good guys win and the ride in between isn’t actually all that bad, other than the fact that Boll’s biggest weakness is that he can’t seem to capture emotional depth. He has actors who want to give it, but for some reason Boll’s camera can’t capture it.
The best thing to come out of this movie is the realization that Statham really is the new Bruce Willis, before Bruce went all weird and decided he was an ‘act-or’. No one in the theatre laughed when Statham spoke because he plays characters you want to like. He plays them in a likable way. He almost never plays the bad guy and he always seems to be protecting the innocent or saving the girl. And he never phones it in. Frankly, I think that if he continues on this career path it really will be the surprising movies in his career such as The Transporter that will become the classics of the action genre for this generation the way that Die Hard is for those just ahead of us.
With The Orphange doing visual effects and the rest of the cast putting forth a pretty good effort, it does look on the surface like it’s pretty good. I want to particularly make note of Matthew Lillard who Boll indicated was very nice and fairly talented, he just doesn’t get very good parts ‘because of the way he looks.’ (Snort.) Boll told a story about how he decided to invite an orphanage full of children to the set one day so they could see how movies get made. A bus of about 60 kids shows up and the only two people on set were Liotta and Lillard. Ray Liotta fussed and stormed off the set, but Matthew Lillard was kind enough to take the kids around the whole of the soundstage, spend almost an hour and a half with them and show them what making movies is like. Now that’s what I call a man, non? Big hand for The Lillard.
Now for the end… can I actually recommend that you see this movie? I’m not sure. If you’re the kind of person who lives and dies for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy then no. You won’t be able to make it through, but if you’re the kind of person who sincerely enjoys watching Masters of the Universe just for a good laugh, then you’ll enjoy this movie enough to pay for the rental.
I’m going to post the videos I have of Dr. Boll (PhD in German Literature) so that you can see for yourself the man, hear it from his own mouth how he feels about his movies and they way people talk about them. Of note is that the man interviewing him in the long one (approx 15 mins) is Chris Alexander of Rue Morgue Radio. Boll issued a challenge to his four most staunch critics that they could fly to Vancouver and he would fight them. Like in hand-to-hand combat. Like it a boxing ring. And they did! And it’s all going to be in a documentary, that has not yet hit imdb.com, called The Manoeuvre in Vancouver. The preview was hilarious. See it when it comes out. Also included are his brief remarks before the movie in which he tells a story about shooting BloodRayne, including a hilarious anecdote about Michael Madsen, whose issues with substance abuse have been well documented. Hee. UPDATE: Can’t seem to post them because they’re too big. Will have to investigate YouTube or possibly editing them down. They’ll be up as soon as possible. Thanks for the patience.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }